Russian Missiles Failed in Venezuela During U.S. Attack

Russia’s Fearsome Arsenal Fizzled in Venezuela. Here’s Why.The Venezuelan regime had high-powered air defense systems from its allies in the Kremlin, but failed to set much of it up.A destroyed Buk launcher at La Carlota air base in Caracas after the U.S. strikes.Credit...The New York TimesRussia’s Fearsome Arsenal Fizzled in Venezuela. Here’s Why.The Venezuelan regime had high-powered air defense systems from its allies in the Kremlin, but failed to set much of it up.A destroyed Buk launcher at La Carlota air base in Caracas after the U.S. strikes.Credit...The New York TimesSKIP Jan. 12, 2026Venezuela’s advanced, Russian-made air defense systems were not even hooked up to radar when U.S. helicopters swooped in to snatch President Nicolás Maduro, American officials say, rendering Venezuelan airspace surprisingly unprotected long before the Pentagon launched its attack.The vaunted, Russian-made S-300 and Buk-M2 air defense systems were supposed to be a potent symbol of the close ties between Venezuela and Russia, two rivals of the United States. Their alliance appeared to give Russia a growing foothold in the Western Hemisphere.With great fanfare, Venezuela announced it was buying the air defenses from Russia in 2009 amid tensions with Washington. Venezuela’s leftist president at the time, Hugo Chávez, heralded the weapons as a deterrent to American aggression.But Venezuela was unable to maintain and operate the S-300 — one of the world’s most advanced antiaircraft systems — as well as the Buk defense systems, leaving its airspace vulnerable when the Pentagon launched Operation Absolute Resolve to capture Mr. Maduro, four current and former American officials said.Beyond that, an analysis by The New York Times of photos, videos and satellite imagery found that some air defense components were still in storage, rather than operational, at the time of the attack. Taken together, the evidence suggests that, despite months of warnings, Venezuela was not ready for the American invasion.In short, the Venezuelan military’s incompetence appears to have played a big role in the U.S. success. Venezuela’s much-touted antiaircraft systems were essentially not connected when U.S. forces entered the skies over Venezuela’s capital, and they may not have been working for years, former officials and analysts said.“After years of corruption, poor logistics and sanctions, all those things would have certainly degraded the readiness of Venezuela’s air defense systems,” said Richard de la Torre, a former C.I.A. station chief in Venezuela who now runs Tower Strategy, a Washington-based lobbying firm.ImageA Russian Buk air defense system at a rehearsal for a Victory Day military parade in Red Square in 2018.Credit...Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated PressRussia shared in the failure, officials and experts said, because Russian trainers and technicians would have had to ensure the system was fully operational and help keep it that way.“Russia’s own war demands in Ukraine may have limited its ability to sustain those systems in Venezuela, to make sure they were fully integrated,” Mr. de la Torre said.In fact, two former American officials argued that Russia may have quietly allowed the military equipment it sold Venezuela to fall into disrepair, to avoid greater conflict with Washington. If the Venezuelan military had shot down an American aircraft, they said, the blowback on Russia could have been significant.When Mr. Chávez bought the air defense systems from Russia, they were part of a spending spree worth billions of dollars that was supposed to remake Venezuela’s military, filling its arsenal with Su-30 fighters jets, T-72 tanks and thousands of shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile systems known as Manpads. Before then, Venezuela had largely relied on U.S. military hardware, but as hostilities grew, Washington banned the sale of arms to the South American country in 2006.“With these rockets it’s going to be very difficult for foreign planes to come and bomb us,” Mr. Chávez said in 2009, after the deal to buy the Russian air defense systems was announced.But Venezuela struggled to maintain the Russian equipment, often running out of spare parts and the technical know-how to service the military hardware or operate it, said the four current and former senior U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive intelligence.“Seems those Russian air defenses didn’t quite work so well, did they?” The U.S. defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said just days after the attack.The ouster of Mr. Maduro and the Venezuelan government’s new, if uneasy, partnership with the United States is a blow to Russian influence in the region.ImagePresident Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro in Moscow, Russia, in May.Credit...Pool photo by Alexander ZemlianichenkoOver the past 15 years, Moscow had steadily rebuilt its presence in Latin America after the collapse of the Soviet Union, increasing its arms sales to the region and forging new alliances, especially with Venezuela.But that alliance may not have been as ironclad as Russia and Venezuela portrayed. Moscow had signaled to Washington that it would give the Americans unfettered influence in Venezuela in return for a free hand in Ukraine, according to Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.At a news conference in November, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, was asked if Moscow would deploy more weapons to Venezuela to shore up its defenses in the way it has to neighboring Belarus, one of Russia’s closest allies.Mr. Lavrov made it clear that Venezuela, so far from Russian soil, was not as central to Russia. “It would be inaccurate to juxtapose our partnership with Venezuela with our union with the Republic of Belarus,” he said.Russia and Venezuela signed a strategic partnership agreement in May, when Mr. Maduro visited Moscow, to expand ties, including defense cooperation. But it did not commit either country to collective defense.“I think, coming out of this crisis, Russian prestige is going to be quite tarnished,” said Brian Naranjo, who was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas from 2014 to 2018.ImageAn apartment building in Catia la Mar, Venezuela, after the U.S. strikes.Credit...The New York Times“They didn’t show up when Venezuela needed it,” he said. “They’ve been revealed to be a paper tiger.”The Venezuelan military appeared to be taken by surprise by the U.S. operation, despite months of threats from Washington.An assessment by The Times of photos and videos posted to social media, along with satellite imagery, shows that the U.S. military primarily targeted locations where Venezuela had deployed or stored Buk air defense systems.In one location, storage units containing components of the Buk missile system were destroyed by U.S. aircraft before they were even deployed, indicating that the Venezuelan military was unprepared for the invasion that unfolded.In La Guaira, a coastal city that buffers Caracas, several videos posted online showed a large explosion at warehouses in the port. Days later, the local governor, José Alejandro Terán, posted a video on his Facebook page of him touring the damaged warehouses. He said they had been used to store medicine for kidney patients.The footage also showed the burned-out remains of a Buk missile launcher, along with what appeared to be missile or missile debris scattered between two warehouses.VideoCreditCredit...Just a few miles away, in Catia La Mar, loud explosions were also reported during the night of the attack. Mr. Terán later visited the site and posted videos from the area, as did other social media users. The footage showed bombed-out warehouses containing several components of a Buk system, including launchers and a command vehicle, suggesting the air defense vehicles had been in storage, instead of being operational.VideoCreditCredit...At La Carlota Air Base, videos recorded during the attack show explosions across the military airfield and smoke billowing into the air. Hours later, after daybreak, footage — including video broadcast by Venezuela’s state-run television network — showed the smoldering remains of a Buk missile launcher system.VideoCreditCredit...At another airport, in the coastal town of Higuerote, footage posted online captured a nighttime explosion as a separate fire burned nearby. Video from the aftermath showed a destroyed Buk missile launcher.VideoCreditCredit...“The Venezuelan armed forces were practically unprepared for the U.S. attack,” said Yaser Trujillo, a military analyst in Venezuela. “Their troops were not dispersed, the detection radar was not activated, deployed or operational. It was a chain of errors that allowed the United States to operate with ease, facing a very low threat from the Venezuelan air defense system.”Venezuela’s Manpads also failed to make much of an appearance to defend the country’s airspace against U.S. aircraft.In October, Mr. Maduro boasted about Venezuela’s arsenal of SA-24 Manpads, claiming they had been deployed in key positions to defend the country, ready for a U.S. attack. Venezuela’s bulk purchase of Russian Manpads in 2017 had long concerned American officials, given their ability to shoot down aircraft.“Any military force in the world knows the power of the Igla-S, and Venezuela has no less than 5,000,” Mr. Maduro said at the time, using another name for the SA-24.Several videos, however, showed the same moment in which what appeared to be a Manpads was fired during the operation only to come under intense counterfire from U.S. aircraft. Two American officials familiar with the operation suggested that the heavy response from the U.S. military may have created a disincentive for other Venezuelan troops to fire their Manpads.VideoCreditCredit...How long the fragile peace with the United States will hold remains to be seen. Washington is threatening to use its naval forces massed in the Caribbean if Caracas does not heed its demands, including opening up oil fields to U.S. companies.Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also pressuring the interim Venezuelan government to expel foreign advisers from Russia, Cuba, Iran and China, in a bid to assert Washington’s dominance over the country and the region more widely.Shortly after Mr. Maduro’s capture, the State Department published a photo of a glowering President Trump with the caption “this is our hemisphere.”“On many levels, what the Russians were trying to do was just to piss us off just by being in Venezuela,” said Mr. Naranjo, the former U.S. diplomat. “There’s a desire on Russia’s part to demonstrate that they still have strategic reach around the globe.”But, he said, Putin’s ability “to come into our backyard and annoy us doesn’t go to the point of actually confronting us.”Paul Sonne contributed reporting from Berlin. Video production by Jamie Leventhal and McKinnon de Kuyper.Maria Abi-Habib is an investigative correspondent reporting on Latin America and is based in Mexico City.Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.Christiaan Triebert is a Times reporter working on the Visual Investigations team, a group that combines traditional reporting with digital sleuthing and analysis of visual evidence to verify and source facts from around the world.Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.SKIP